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Tuesday, January 5, 2016

2015 Instagram Swaps: The Texas Mini Swap

This Post was originally prepared in August 2015, but was never posted live to the blog.

I am so excited to finally share about my very first Instagram Mini Swap! As some of you know, I currently live in Texas. For many years I wasn't the happiest person to be moving from Alaska to Texas and then living her in the gazillion degree weather! It was not until well after the birth of our daughter (Okay, it was only a few months ago) that I finally started to think of Texas as "home."

I was scared to sign-up for my first swap, being relatively new to instagram I had no idea the expectations that were involved! It was a lot less than I thought, so if you have an instagram account and want to give a swap a chance, please check out Open Quilt Swaps which is an instagram account devoted to showcasing swaps that are open for sign-ups or that are announcing a future Swaps!Texas Mini Swap

The person I was making this mini for was Crafty Giraffe and she certainly is an experienced swapper (click her name to check out her Instagram account full of her swap sharing)! I wanted to give the idea of modern city blocks with the way the streets stop, start and weave together in the bustle of Urban life.

To make this mini, which measures at 24" X 24", I first made a fabric panel from scraps.

Next I traced the outline of Texas on the computer screen to a sheet of thin paper. It was much easier to actually lay the paper on the screen than to print the pattern for which I was looking!

I flipped the fabric panel over and pinned the reversed Texas image on the back with a square of Black printed fabric between. Using the line as my guide I stitched out the shape of Texas. From the front I cut about 1/8" from the stitched line, pulling away a cut-out of the State of Texas.

You can see from this close-up that I stitched back over the line and added a second line in another bright color!

From the Texas sized cut-out I made a little Throw pillow as an extra gift!

This is the package I sent along with a few little extras.

Once this was mailed, it was time to resort my scraps!

In return, I was absolutely delighted to receive my first mini from the UK! I loved that they took the time to learn about me and figure out the perfect little things that I love: Tea! My lovely swapper was Bubbles 535!